Along with many of my fellow Americans, both Dems and GOP, I spent yesterday doing the HAPPY DANCE!  WE WON!  Our voices were heard!  Not even a simple majority came out of the Senate, thanks to all of us who shut down the phone lines in the Capital building!  Some e-mail sites are still down, as I learned when I tried to write e-mails to say "Thank you!". 

However, there are often "unintended consequences" to any action.  Ever do a good deed that came back and bit you in the behind?  It often happens...or is it just me?  Bottom line, the talk shows I've been listening to for 16 years due to a personal situation I prefer not to discuss in this venue, are in danger of being dashed on the ash heap of history. 

For the past week, the success of conservative radio talk shows in alerting the American people to the shamnesty act the Senate thought they could sneak by us over Memorial Day weekend has brought about calls for a renewal of the antiquated Fairness Doctrine.  The Shamnesty bill and it's reward to illegals, became a cause celeb for both Democrats and Republicans who do not believe that the government should reward bad behavior by awarding "Z" visas that are open-ended.  We also did not believe our bureacracy (i.e., our government) was able to do the requisite background checks of illegals in 24 hours as the bill promised, when they cannot process passport requests for our own CITIZENS in less than 10 months!  As a result, we overloaded the Senate's phone system.  The sheer volume of calls, e-mails and faxes insisting our representatives STOP this travesty of a bill, stunned our representatives and senators so much that we have that "unintended consequence" which would result in shutting down our voice on the radio airwaves, and could lead to shutting down this blog and others like it.

Thanks to Mike Pence, and his co-sponsors on the Broadcaster Freedom Act, all is not lost. 

"GLENN: Holy cow, what a week it's been, huh?

“Encourage all your listeners to support the Broadcaster Freedom Act. We've introduced it in the house yesterday with 120 cosponsors. We have to take away the ability of the FCC to bring back the Fairness Doctrine without an act of congress and the Broadcaster Freedom Act does that.”

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: It has. Not a bad week's worth of work for conservatives in the Senate defeating the amnesty bill and Republicans with some help from Democrats beating back the beginnings of an effort to return the archaic un-Fairness Doctrine to the airwaves of America, but we still have a lot of work to do, Glenn, and I want to make sure your listeners know that.

GLENN: Mike, I have to tell you, I sat down with my wife last night and I said, honey, I just, I want you to know the Fairness Doctrine, if this thing were put in, our career would be over. We would not survive a Fairness Doctrine and, you know, we have liberal websites that have tried to take things out of context and twist us and, you know, alert our sponsors that we're hate mongers and bigots and that's failed; you've got, you know, people trying to do the Imus thing, you've got people trying to take you down every single way, in every way they can. Now they're going to the Fairness Doctrine and if this goes through, it will kill talk radio, it will kill, I believe, broadcast radio. How real is this, Mike?

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Well, I think it's very real and more to the point, Glenn — and by the way, I'm a big fan of this show. This is my first time on the air. Thanks for having me.

GLENN: You bet.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: But let me say you're exactly right. You know, and what's dangerous about this is you have some of the most powerful members of the United States Senate, mostly Democrats, one Republican who's recanted his call for the Fairness Doctrine to come back, but you have them all talking about the need to restore balance to the airwaves, you know, to restore rules that require that you hear both sides. But to your point, Glenn, if you bring back these archaic rules that were on the books from 1949 until 1987, the result would not be that radio stations around America would carry Glenn Beck and Al Franken. It's that faced with the administrative costs and legal costs associated with complaints filed to the FCC on fairness issues, most of your affiliates around the country simply wouldn't carry either one of your programs and so it represents an extraordinary chilling effect on the American political debate and with John Podesta's, Center for American progress producing a report two or three weeks ago identifying the structural — the topic of the report was the structural imbalance of American talk radio. I think the argument is being laid for a Democrat in the White House with appointments to the Federal Communications Commission to simply, through the FCC bring some version of this back after 2009. That's why we took the version yesterday but that's also why we have to pass the Broadcaster Freedom Act that will deny the FCC the power to bring back the Fairness Doctrine without an act of congress.

GLENN: But I don't understand this. Without an act of congress, I mean, congress wants to do it now.

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Well, that's right now. But look at the vote we had yesterday on the (inaudible) method. 309 members of congress, when they were asked to go on the record, every single Republican and half of the Democrats voted against the Fairness Doctrine. You know, I feel very comfortable that in the bright light of the American political debate congress would not bring back this archaic rule anytime soon, but your listeners ought to understand what you know, Glenn, and that is that the simple majority, under current law, a simple majority on the FCC with a Democrat in the White House who supports the Fairness Doctrine could bring this regulation back without an act of congress —

GLENN: Wait. Are you going to be able to get this new law passed?

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: It's going to be difficult because while — we filed the bill yesterday with all the Republican leadership and 120 —

GLENN: Can you even bring it to the floor?

CONGRESSMAN PENCE: Look, a majority decides what comes to the floor but we're going to use every, you know, legislative weapon in the — in our holster to try and force the Broadcaster Freedom Act to the floor, but if your listeners encourage their member of congress, Republican or Democrat, to cosponsor the bill, to support efforts to bring it to the floor of the congress and to the floor of the Senate, I think we can get this done, but we have to pass the Broadcaster Freedom Act or the next Democrat party administration in the White House could do this without passing a bill in congress.

That is, as long as "We The People" make our voices heard.  We need to write, call, e-mail and fax our opinions to our legislators to insure that both the right and the left are not censored.  No matter who is in charge in Washington D.C., we are impacted unless we have the right to have our "say" known!  My perverse sense of humor, and my equally perverse memory leads me to say, "Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country."  For those of you under the age of 40, too bad you won't appreciate the humor.